Boltzmann Brains (split from Spacetime is doomed.)

[Strange]

1 hour ago, Conjurer said:

It didn't help him when he came up with the idea of Boltzmann Brains, because it seemed so far fetched that the general public made fun of him about it.  It was around the same time they had the radio scare of an alien invasion.  

He didn't come up with the idea of Boltzmann Brains. I think it might have been Arthur Eddington (which would have been about 30 years after Boltzmann died).

The first commercial radio broadcasts also did not take place until long after Boltzmann dies so I struggle to see how a scare about alien invasion could have anything to do with it. And if you are thinking of Orson Wells' War of the Worlds dramatization,  then that was even longer after Boltzmann's death. (And the stories of panic created by the broadcast seem to be greatly exaggerated, anyway).

 

[Conjurer]

8 minutes ago, Strange said:

He didn't come up with the idea of Boltzmann Brains. I think it might have been Arthur Eddington (which would have been about 30 years after Boltzmann died).

I think you may be right.  I must have mis-remembered that part.  I noticed one of the sources of the wiki is Sean Carroll, and it says it was Arthur Eddington.  He is supposed to be the expert on that sort of thing these days.

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2008/12/29/richard-feynman-on-boltzmann-brains/ 

I found his paper on it.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.00850

[Conjurer]

I don't believe his paper is correct, because it doesn't consider the possibility that Maxwell's Demon could interact with the universe as an ordinary observer in a time-like direction, or that any particle could interact with another particle in a time-like direction.  If that occurred, it could increase the amount of time the universe had to change it's entropy, no matter how long the universe lived.  A time-like loop could increase the amount of time thermodynamic operations have to change states indefinitely in almost any type of universe.  Then it would limit them to only considering universal models where time-like loops do not exist, negligible, or not considered directly.

There are many particle interactions that influence it's previous behavior based on acts of observations.  Each time it does this, it changes its current state or location instantly.  If this was done multiple times, then the current "present" state of the universe could be a total of how ever many times this interaction occurred and the length of time involved.  The change of state of the universe could go through many alterations which add up a lifetime larger than the overall age of a small closed universe that collapses on itself, even.  Then even a small closed short lived universe could be heavily dominated by BB's.  

     

Edited January 17, 2020 by Conjurer

[Strange]

9 minutes ago, Conjurer said:

I don't believe his paper is correct, because it doesn't consider the possibility that Maxwell's Demon could interact with the universe

It doesn’t include the effects of Santa Claus appearing either

[Conjurer]

1 hour ago, Strange said:

It doesn’t include the effects of Santa Claus appearing either

That form of BB would be more unlikely to occur, considering that the glacial continent at the north pole never existed.

Maxwell's Demon could just be any ordinary observer.  For example, the staff and moderators of the forums are similar to Maxwell's Demon.  They pick and choose what threads are available and what users can chat on them.  Then the forums do not follow a natural state of entropy that would be in concurrence with the laws of thermodynamics.  You could choose to arrange things in a high or low state of entropy.

Then Maxwell's Demon could be any observer that is close to a gravitational well in the early universe.  Then he would interact with the universe in a time-like direction.

It could mean that Maxwell's Demon didn't make vacuum energy from creating pocket universes until about halfway into the lifetime of the universe or about 7 billion years after the Big Bang.  I would predict that would be how old the first ordinary observers reached a technological civilization, since the only number large enough to account for vacuum energy would be the potential number of pocket universes.  Then they would have to be artificial pocket universes that could not occur naturally.  Then evidence shows that the vacuum energy has increased more dramatically, since we achieved a technological civilization.   

Edited January 17, 2020 by Conjurer

[Conjurer]

I think he is still in charge of the physics and science department at Caltech, so if you get any new users rambling on about their universal model, it would be good to point out that they shouldn't even bother if it predicts too many Boltzmann Brains.  I know you guys get a lot of those.  It seemed like it would be a lot simpler for them to say they are just not accepting any universal models that involve time travel or time loops.  It could cause a discrepancy in the times of the evolution of thermodynamic principals they would be weighing it against, like the emergence of Boltzmann Brains.